Wednesday, May 30, 2018

I'll have a G-I-F please! TC & Company's path to more Eyeballs

That's animated G-I-F! You've seen 'em for a long time now. And Now you see 'em on most all social media...Incl: here!

It became a proprietary concern for so long that most platforms refused to ignite a GIF, Flash or whatever else was Not-Their-Source. But with more of the recent mind-set that "it's OK to play in my sandbox" from the likes of Big Name here and Big Name there, it might be time to hop on the animated GIF bandwagon to E-Y-E-B-A-L-L Central. It's become much easier to find and apply GIF mechanics with all the free and quasi-free software to make your own animated GIF.
(That's - Jif to some or hard 'g' to others) I like 'crunchy' style.

Here are a few sites that are free and according to Google "Safe" (or so they say) - I have personally tried (2) without glitches; https://ezgif.com and https://imgflip.com/gif-maker). I used EZ gif to make an animated GIF with one of my spots for Lycos search engines, featuring Claudia Schiffer. Now here's the rub...there ain't no sound to these guys! Yeah, sorta anti-usable for any voice-over artist wouldn't you think? Well, in a (2) dimensional world - sure. But the whole idea behind the internet - is to get seen by those Eye-Balls behind all the 'bells and whistles' ... the code!
So, when you post animated GIFs, it's one more way to get seen by the likes of Google. It's a reel-them-in sorta time as with a teaser. And it's always playing so there's no 'click bait' consequences.

AND, you can re-name the GIF anything you want. So, it'll get picked up by Google bots...depending how precise you are with titling keywords. I chose TomCliffordLycosVoiceOver.
P. S I also used the default Windows video editor to edit the original spot from 30 to 6 seconds. Here's the entire spotwith sound at our FB page.

Thing is: Can there be too many GIFs floating around on one screen or one part of the screen? Below is an animated GIF I made from the Arm & Hammer Tv spot featuring the "Shaker" character I voiced. This one is a little bit longer with a bit more weight at (8 Mb's). Also, it takes a little bit of creative talent to make 'em seamless...just a matter of time before sound is gonna be added. Things might start looking & sounding an awful bit like 'Max Headroom' re-visited around the neighborhood soon...Mr Rogers!

Here's the full spot on Youtube with sound, including the Shaker Character voice I did for Arm & Hammer's new roll-out baking soda shaker dispenser. Just another proof of a happier life through television or...the internet.